Using Iomega Zip drive with A500 Plus

[AmigaBruno]

After looking at various options of mass storage devices for my Amiga A500 Plus, I think an Iomega Zip drive may be the answer. This is due to the rarity and prices of anything else.

I'm not sure which Iomega Zip drives would be compatible, or how to connect and get them working.

I've read about the possibilities or using parallel or SCSI Zip drives and that the capacity must be limited to either 100Mb or 250Mb.

I've recently started studying electronics again, by getting an electronic projects starter kit with breadboard, so I hope this will help me.

It may be that I won't even be able to fit an Iomega Zip drive to my Amiga A500 Plus, so then I'll just have to carry on using floppies.

I hope someone can give me a definitive answer on this.

[AmigaBruno]

I used SCSI Zip 100s with my Amiga 500s using a GVP A500+ HD8 and a GVP A530 Turbo.  I had to set up a MountList, but other than that I had no problems.  Later I used an internal Zip 100 SCSI in my Amiga 4000 with the WarpEngine 4040 and then CyberStorm MK-III.  Now I have USB on my 4000, I can use Zip 100, 250, and 750, all tested and working.

In theory, I would suspect you can use an internal Zip IDE in your A500 with the appropriate IDE interface (like an AdIDE.)

OK, thanks. I've already worked out that I can't afford to buy a SCSI controller and this information is for the A500 Plus, which is quite a different computer from the A1200, so I only want advice for the A500 Plus. Of course, I may get charged by Customs for any devices like an AdIDE which I may buy from the USA or Canada. Can anyone tell me how much extra that could be?

[AmigaBruno]

I don't know how hack-ish you want to get, but over on your side of the Pond you might be able to find a Subway USB and an A500 clock port adapter.

I can afford the A500 clock port adapter, but NOT the Subway USB (£100), so that's out, I'm afraid.

[AmigaBruno]

The parallel port device works on the Amiga.  It can't be that fast, but there are files on Aminet as I recall -- ppazip.lha.  It will need a change to the Amiga parallel port (http://netti.nic.fi/~some-e/amiga/amizip/)

So, basically I need the interface which is pictured and described here http://netti.nic.fi/~some-e/amiga/amizip/#hard . Where can I buy it and how much is it? I'm just starting to study electronics again, after never getting very far in the past, and I don't know if I'd ever be able to make anything like that.

[AmigaBruno]

FYI: A500 won't drive the parallel port over 40K bytes per second.  40K is what my 25Mhz A3000 used to get.  A plain A500 might be only 25 or 30K I just can't remember.  A floppy drive gets 11K / sec when reading or writing whole tracks (like when copying a disk).

My 060 based Amigas get 60K/s Parallel port speeds.

All PAR: speeds measured with ParNet.  One of the grooviest networking solutions ever made for the Amiga!  1980s technology rulez forever!


A lousy SCSI controller will get 1000K / sec

A decent one will get 2000K / sec

A great one will get more.

I can't remember what speeds I used to get on my A500 SCSI or A2000 SCSI.  Anyway it depends entirely on specifically which controller you used.

I'm not really concerned with the speed at all. I'm trying to avoid accumulating a stack of floppy disks, as well as having to search through them all to find certain files.

At the moment, I'm doing some graphics in Deluxe Paint, as well as studying Logo, but I plan to do some AmigaBASIC programming soon, as well as get a copy of Photon Paint, which is what I started with years ago. This would mean I could fit everything on to 3 Zip disks (graphics, Logo, and AmigaBASIC), for at least a few months before managing to fill any of them.

[AmigaBruno]

Not to be contrary the the esteemed learned gentlemen of the forum, but you could breadboard that in an afternoon for about $6 USD with parts from Jameco.com -- or not.  SCSI solutions will run >$100, a 40 Euro bootable IDE device (http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?p=76035#post76035), a $120 USD 4 MB RAM/IDE device (http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=12037), a Clock Port to USB device + a Subway USB controller (really expensive), a ParNet to PC cable, a Null Modem cable to PC via Amiga Forever, or a Modem to bulletin board transfer.

Pick your poison and check your wallet.

I haven't done anything with breadboards yet, only read the 11 page manual that came with the kit. I'd get the parts from http://www.maplin.co.uk/ or from eBay. Can you tell me the names of the components? Unfortunately, the first circuit in the manual is a dimmer switch circuit, but I can't see any sign of a control which is used to dim the LED. I think I'll have to contact the seller on eBay to find out. A timer circuit clearly shows that you have to touch two wires together instead of a switch to start the timer running. I'm not sure if that EUR40 bootable IDE device is currently available. The thread started in 2010 and said they were being made to order. I couldn't view the last page of the thread. Are you saying that I could use a Parnet to PC cable to connect an Iomega Zip drive properly? Would this http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=21_73&products_id=247  one do?

[AmigaBruno]

I don't mean to be blunt, but if you are just figuring out things like how to light up an LED as your first potential breadboard project, and can't yet identify the names of electronic components or the symbols for a dimmer switch on a circuit diagram, then the idea of assembling a DIY IDE or SCSI interface for your Amiga in the near future is pretty much unrealistic at this stage.

Again - I don't mean to sound harsh - but I think any other assessment would be doing you a dis-service.  I do commend you for learning electronics, but it will take months or years for you to get to the stage you can assemble a complicated digital circuit like a hard drive controller.

As for the ZIP drive solution for your Amiga - yes, it's possible. But if you are going to try and find a SCSI or IDE solution to drive the ZIP drive, then you might as well be using hard drives or CF cards on that SCSI controller instead.

I have heard about the parallel port solution for ZIP drives, but I'm sure it won't be pleasant (i.e. slow).

ZIP drives, in their own right, were always semi reliable it seemed (google ZIP DRIVE and CLICK OF DEATH together).

Really, your best solution for mass storage on that Amiga500, is probably the clockport interface and a USB Subway card.

I know it's expensive, but it's much more reliable in the long run.

There is a cheap way for you to get a SCSI controller for the A500.  You would need to pick up a cheap Zorro II SCSI controller card for an A2000 (A2091 or something) and attach it to the side port of the A500 with a "slingshot" connector or gender converter connector.  The A2000 card will then hang off the side of your A500 and look fairly ugly (it will also be exposed and need to be supported with some DIY arrangement), but then, with a cheap SCSI hard drive from eBay you could have a SCSI hard drive setup for less than $50.

(see halfway down this page for picture)
http://paulq.org/amiga/a500tribute.html

Oh, you would also need to power the hard drive.  An external SCSI enclosure or spare PC power supply might work for that.  Again, pretty ugly solution but it would work.

The absolute cheapest way would be to pick up a cheap 486 or pentium I laptop from somewhere (don't pay more than $30) and use it via a parallel port cable or null modem cable to act as a file server for your A500.  I'm thinking of something like Amiga Explorer or the old Siamese system.  Essentially, the laptop would be like an external hard drive for your A500.

So, I can't possibly build that interface. Will a lead available from Amigakit or Vesalia make it compatible? If so which one?

I said that I don't think I can afford a SCSI controller. I certainly haven't found one for less than $50. I also said that I couldn't afford the Subway USB.

I've put in a bid on an Iomega Zip 100Mb parallel drive. I hope this won't be a waste of money. I think I should regularly back up my files anyway.

Please give me more information about the Slingshot or gender converter. I don't think that Slingshots are available anymore, but I don't think know if the Amiga A500/A500 Plus side expansion slot is unique either.

The Amiga has made it possible for me to continue doing computer graphics, which makes me happy. Windoze software stopped me from doing this, because it doesn't work in much the same way and I thought all I needed to do was persevere, but then I gradually stopped. Linux graphics software isn't really any better, not even GrafX2.

[AmigaBruno]

@AmigaBruno

I hope someone will sell you a super cheap A1200 so that you can Dpaint to the max in 256 colors.  I luv Dpaint.  And I loved it even more when I got an AGA machine.

What sorts of things exactly do you pixel in Dpaint?

Do u do static gfx or do u like to do animations?

I'm not looking to replace my A500 Plus with an A1200, but would keep both of them. The A500 Plus is quite different to the A1200. I don't think that 100% of software that will run on an A500 Plus will run on an A1200, no matter what you do. I wonder if one possible storage solution would be to connect my A500 Plus to an A1200 with a CF card installed on it, then save data from the A500 Plus to the A1200 CF card. I'm not sure that would work, though. At the moment, I've found 2 Amiga A1200s (not on eBay) at prices I can afford, although I haven't got the money at the moment. I'm worried that by the time I have the money they'll be sold. I've also met someone with a group that repairs things who told me he may sell me one of his three A1200s, but he hasn't contacted me.

The stuff I've done in Deluxe Paint recently is some figures of superheroes copied from art books and just one original piece of artwork of a stained glass window. This was a copy of a chalk type pastel painting originally done on black paper. Someone at a meeting said "You didn't draw that with the MOUSE, did you?!" and I replied that I did. I haven't done any animations on this Amiga, especially because some of the examples supplied won't run. I just get an error message that there's not enough RAM to animate. This is a standard A500 Plus with 1Mb RAM, which is all chip RAM. I wonder if Deluxe Paint III expects there to be some fast RAM.

[AmigaBruno]

Compatible with what?  The Zip drive?  No.



Old, crappy SCSI controller cards for the A2000 often sell for less than $50.  Look for an A2091 with old ROMs (6.6 or earlier).  I just sold an A2091 on eBay that had the latest ROMs and all the latest revision chips and it only sold for $35US.



It's likely to be a waste of money if you buy it and don't have a way to connect it to your Amiga.  Perhaps a better plan would be to find a way / device / method you will know will work for sure first and then buy the drive that goes with that.



I don't own one so can't tell you more.  Google is your friend.
These are generally cheap devices as they are fairly passive straight-through connectors with minimal components.  In fact, there may be a plan to build on on Aminet (I believe I saw one years ago).  It's a basic device so you could probably build one even with limited electrical knowledge.

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=18897
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=48080
http://www.google.ca/search?q=amiga+500+zorro+connector&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a



You do know about WinUAE for Windows, don't you?  You can run all your Amiga software in that.  DeluxePaint runs very well.  It's nice to own a real Amiga, but with the amount of grief you seem to be going through, you might want to look into this alternative.

I could only find A2091 ROMs for the SCSI controller. I'll stop bidding on the Zip drive, in that case.

So far, I've only bought one Amiga related thing I couldn't use, which was a VGA adapter.

I don't really want to use WinUAE for Windows. I've got a copy which came with hardly anything at all, on a DVD full of emulators. It's not just nice to own a real Amiga. One thing is an Amiga, while the emulator isn't and I may not even be able to get rid of the Microsoft style Windows or the window borders, which will remind me all the time that it's not an Amiga! Apart from this, I'll be distracted by other programs, especially web browsers, but with the Amiga A500 Plus I can just sit there are do some artwork with no distractions from the Internet.

[AmigaBruno]

Hi. I am not understanding what you are trying to say here.  Why are you looking for a ROM for a SCSI Controller?  

Here's what you need to do:

1. BUY a whole SCSI controller card.  Any of the ones on this list that are ALSO Zorro II for the A2000 will work. ($50 max)
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/scsi
The older ones that only do simple PIO transfers usually sell for cheap, because few people want them.
Try e-mailing one of these people or posting an ad here:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=40994

2. Next, BUY one of these ($25)
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=8373
...or make one according to the plans here:
http://aminet.net/package/docs/hard/2000slot

3. Then, buy (for a few dollars) an old SCSI hard drive. Or get one for free from a computer recycler store or Craigslist. (Free or $10 max)

4. Power the hard drive with an old PC power supply you get for free.

5. Connect all of the above together and connect the lot to your A500's expansion port.

6. YOU ARE DONE.

Honestly, that's the cheapest way.  It's not the prettiest, but it's the cheapest way to get a true hard drive on an Amiga 500.

Alternatively, buy an A500 sidecar.  It's essentially the same thing, in a pretty, neat looking case.  It will cost more but save you the hassle of sourcing all the parts.

Also, could you post some of your artwork here?  I'd like to see it, sounds interesting.  I'm setting up an A500 for DPaint myself, as well.

I  searched for Amiga A2091 (or whatever the number was) and the ROMs were all that came up. A search for Amiga SCSI brings up various SCSI drives which I assume require a SCSI controller, but the cheapest item at the moment which comes with a SCSI controller is listed as Buy it now for about £87/US$140, so a big difference there to your suggested "$50 max".

[AmigaBruno]

Hi. I am not understanding what you are trying to say here.  Why are you looking for a ROM for a SCSI Controller?  

Here's what you need to do:

1. BUY a whole SCSI controller card.  Any of the ones on this list that are ALSO Zorro II for the A2000 will work. ($50 max)
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/scsi
The older ones that only do simple PIO transfers usually sell for cheap, because few people want them.
Try e-mailing one of these people or posting an ad here:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=40994

2. Next, BUY one of these ($25)
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=8373
...or make one according to the plans here:
http://aminet.net/package/docs/hard/2000slot

3. Then, buy (for a few dollars) an old SCSI hard drive. Or get one for free from a computer recycler store or Craigslist. (Free or $10 max)

4. Power the hard drive with an old PC power supply you get for free.

5. Connect all of the above together and connect the lot to your A500's expansion port.

6. YOU ARE DONE.

Honestly, that's the cheapest way.  It's not the prettiest, but it's the cheapest way to get a true hard drive on an Amiga 500.

Alternatively, buy an A500 sidecar.  It's essentially the same thing, in a pretty, neat looking case.  It will cost more but save you the hassle of sourcing all the parts.

Also, could you post some of your artwork here?  I'd like to see it, sounds interesting.  I'm setting up an A500 for DPaint myself, as well.

I  searched eBay for Amiga A2091 (or whatever the number was) and the ROMs were all that came up. A search for Amiga SCSI brings up various SCSI drives which I assume require a SCSI controller, but the cheapest item at the moment which comes with a SCSI controller is a Zorro plug in card, in Hungary, listed as Buy it now for about £87/US$140, so a big difference there to your suggested "$50 max". These searches included items which wouldn't be sent to the UK, where I am.

I looked on Craigslist, but didn't find anything for Amiga in my city. I don't know about PIO transfers or which drives do them. I was just searching for "Amiga SCSI".

I've just had some very bad financial news, so now I need to concentrate on making anything which will earn me some money, or if not money then something I can use instead of money, because due to the continuing financial crisis, I expect money to be declared worthless later this year. I plan to throw myself into studying electronics intensively as well as  other things. I know that the only way to make money out of the Amiga is to  produce some kind of PCB which either brings the classic Amiga more up to date, or is something which used to be mass produced but no longer is, such as a SCSI controller for the A500 and A500 Plus.

I hope that anything which connects to the left hand side edge connector is compatible with the A500 Plus. I was recently reading a scanned PDF of an old Swedish magazine called "Dator", which was mainly about the Amiga and had an article about software and some hardware which wasn't compatible with the A500 Plus. It said the A501 RAM expansion wasn't compatible. This tells you I speak Swedish. I actually started to translate the Swedish magazine "Amiga Forum", which has been posted here on another thread. If anyone has some German manuals which they can't understand, then I could translate them for a small fee. The Amiga was very popular in Germany, which I'm sure most people on here know.

As for my artwork, most of the stuff I've done with DPaint recently is from tutorials in the books "Draw The Marvel Comics Super Heroes" published by Klutz  and "How To Draw Superman". This means that the examples are Copyright Marvel (Disney) and DC Comics, so I can't post them on here. I have done this kind of artwork in the past on paper and canvas cards, but it's only now that I'm doing it on a computer, thanks to the way that Windoze and even Linux graphics software works. I've also got some books published by Hermes House about cartooning and drawing Manga, which I plan to study to give my artwork more variety.  

At the moment, I could only upload my picture of a stained glass window. Even then, I can only take a pic of it and upload that, because at the moment I have no way of connecting my A500 Plus to any other device. I was surprised when taking pics of the graphics displayed on a SONY 4:3 CRT TV connected via SCART that my HP R927 camera showed the screen refreshing itself and could only take a pic of about one third of the screen, but a cheap Alcatel Android phone I bought recently is able to take pics of the whole screen without any problems. Does anyone here know why this is?

[AmigaBruno]

Keep looking.  You will find a SCSI card for under $50.  They show up in fits and starts on eBay.  One day none, another day three. Look on AmiBay too.
As for making money off designing Amiga hardware - I'm afraid there's very little money in that, even for the people who are professionals (like Jens Schoenfield - sp?).  I don't think he's getting rich from that.  However, if you could prove us wrong that would be great.  Good luck.  I think pursuing electronics is worthwhile.

PS: I would still be interested in seeing your stained glass picture if it's easy for you to post.

I'll keep looking for Amiga SCSI, but I probably need to concentrate on money making schemes now.

I've just searched Craigslist in NYC, as well as Ontario, Ottawa, and Hamilton/Burlington to see if I was missing anything, but none of my searches for Amiga turned up anything to do with SCSI. Obviously, I don't know whereabouts in Ontario you are, and it's a big place.

I think that Jens Schönfeld (alternative spelling Schoenfeld) must be making a living from producing devices for the Amiga and other computers, because how would he find the time to do much else? I didn't say anything about "getting rich", but it depends on your definition of rich. Last year I paid EUR57 for a floppy drive emulator for another computer. I think it was made in a batch of about 20-30 and they were snapped up. I think that lots of Amiga A500/A500 Plus owners may be interested in a version of this which plugs in externally, shows up as DF1:  and is cheaper than the HXC device. I also think that lots of A500/A500 Plus owners may like to get a SCSI hard drive with controller. I could be wrong about this, but however many there are, I'm fairly sure that it could be produced for less money than the prices of the SCSI controllers which have been coming up on eBay. I could buy some of those ROMs and copy them onto EPROMs. I'm not sure if they were by Commodore, but I doubt if the company which made them is still in business, so they can't complain. If not, then they may want something else which can be produced for a lot less than they'd be willing to pay for it. I think that the ultimate example of this is the currently produced ranges of PPC based Amigas. Most of these sell for about EUR1,000, although just a Sam440 board costs less than EUR300, but you have to buy a copy of AmigaOS 4.1 with it. For your money it seems that all you get is a board similar to an old Mac, but with a custom ROM, and a version of U-Boot which checks for particular hardware, otherwise it will refuse to run AmigaOS 4.1. I think that like with Hackintosh projects someone will crack this at some time soon and produce something a lot cheaper than EUR1,000. I doubt it will be me, though. After this, I could probably run AmigaOS 4.1 on my Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver", which I picked up free of charge from http://www.freecycle.org . I've already run the trial version of MorphOS on it.

I think I'll post my pic of a stained glass window on here soon. Some of my other artwork is of a character similar to Supergirl, but fairly different and enough to avoid Copyright infringement. The style of artwork is DC/Marvel, though. Superman was based on the ancient Germanic legend called the "Übermensch" and his powers have been described as similar to Jason and the Argonauts.

[AmigaBruno]

Here's a pic taken with my Android phone of the stained glass window graphic screen I did on my Amiga. I have no other way of transferring this directly from the Amiga to anywhere else at the moment.



That doesn't seem to work, but try clicking on the link below

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=3749

[AmigaBruno]

Looks fun...what version of DPAINT are you using?

I'm using DPaint III. The date given in the manual is Copyright 1989. It mentions EHB modes, but I don't think there's any way of using the ECS 1280 horizontal resolution modes. This would require a patch, because those chips weren't released until 1991. Does DPaint IV support those modes?

[AmigaBruno]

Just an FYI: you can forget about doing animations in 1280 modes on an A500.  The ECS chipset is just tremendously slow in those modes.   In any event you can't even display a 1280 screen in EHB as that would take more bandwidth than exists.

If you are interested in 1280 resolution screens then you really need AGA.

You can draw static graphics in 1280x512x256 colors in Dpaint 5 (maybe 4 too) and it will be a bit sluggish but still completely usable.

If you cut the colors down to 64 then it will be even faster.

I never said I was thinking of doing animations in the 1280 modes, I just wondered if I could use them at all. Anyway, it seems I need to upgrade my RAM even to run some of the animations supplied with DPaint III, but although there have recently been a few A502 1Mb RAM upgrades for the A500 Plus on eBay, there don't seem to be any available now. AFAIK and have read in an old Swedish magazine recently the A501 is incompatible with the A500 Plus.

BTW, I've just noticed this http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=51&products_id=572 , which is a right angled Zorro adapter. I've never noticed this before. I think this may open up some new possibilities when it come to hard drives.